‘For God’s sake,’ Nick Penry murmured.
It was exactly five minutes to eight. Someone tapped discreetly at the door. He flung it open to confront Amy.
‘Um. I thought you might be ready,’ she said. Her cheeks went faintly pink. ‘I’ll come back later.’
Nick jabbed his finger at the clothes on the bed. ‘I won’t wear this get-up. Where have my clothes gone?’
‘I expect they’ve taken them away to dry them properly for you. What’s wrong with the ones they’ve given you?’
‘Everything. D’you really think I’d put all that lot on?’
Amy’s face went a deeper pink. She pushed past him into the room. ‘I don’t give a damn what you wear. Come down to dinner in my little brother’s dressing-gown, if that’s what you feel like.’
Nick suddenly wanted to laugh. Instead he leant against the door frame and folded his arms. ‘A shirt and jersey and an ordinary pair of trousers will do nicely, thank you.’ He watched her flinging open drawers and rummaging through cupboards, suddenly noticing how pretty she was without the disfiguring beret that she had worn all afternoon. She had thick, shiny hair that was an unusual dark red, and warm, clear skin that coloured easily. Her eyes were the bluey-green colour that often went with red hair. She was wearing a creamy-coloured dress of some soft material that was slightly too fussy for her, Nick thought, but she had exceptionally pretty calves and ankles that her high-heeled, pointy-toed shoes with ankle-straps displayed to perfection.
‘Very nice,’ Nick said smoothly. She was holding out a navy-blue jersey that Richard had put away because it was too big for him. There was a plain white shirt too.
‘Leave the shirt unbuttoned if it’s much too tight,’ she said sharply. ‘I shall have to go and look for some trousers belonging to my father. Richard’s will be far too small.’
‘You’re very kind,’ Nick called after her, laughing when she could no longer see him.
A moment or two later she came back with an unexceptional pair of grey flannel trousers. Nick took them.
‘His lordship’s very own?’ he asked, grinning, and Amy snatched her hand away in case their fingers touched. Why did he find her so amusing? It annoyed her. ‘Give me two minutes to change. Unless you’d rather stay?’
‘No, thank you.’
Amy shut the door behind her a little too firmly, and stood in the corridor wondering how Nick Penry had driven her so quickly into prissy defensiveness. He came out very quickly, a tall man with his black hair smoothed down and Richard’s blue jersey tight across his shoulders. Amy had taken the time to collect herself. She was on her own ground, after all. She wouldn’t let this man make her feel like a curiosity in her own home. ‘Let’s go down to dinner,’ she said evenly. ‘You must be hungry.’
‘A little,’ he agreed. ‘It’s so hard to get a decent luncheon on the road. Today’s was bread and margarine.’
Amy stared straight ahead of her. ‘I think you’ll find that dinner will be an improvement on that.’
They went down the stairs in silence. Nick looked up at the portraits as they passed them.
The footman was waiting at the dining-room doors. He held them open as Nick and Amy passed through, and Mr Glass stood waiting behind Amy’s chair. The velvet curtains had been drawn against the cold spring evening, and in the warm glow of shaded lamps Nick saw the elaborate plaster cornice picked out in cream and gold, the cream and gold upholstered chair seats, the smooth curves of the marble fireplace and the delicate colours of Adeline’s collection of early English porcelain shelved on either side of it. A pair of branched silver-gilt candelabra stood on the table, with tall new candles all alight, and an array of silver cutlery, crystal glasses and starched napery.
Nick and Amy sat down, facing each other across the polished gulf of the table. From a white china tureen with curved handles and tiny garlands of gold-painted flowers soup was ladled into bowls so thin that they were almost transparent. On the bowls, and the handles of the cutlery, and worked into the heavy linen napkins, was the same crest, a crowned lion in a wreath of laurel leaves. The footman offered bread wrapped in a napkin folded into intricate peaks, and the butler poured pale gold wine into the glasses. Reflections wavered back at once from the polished wood.
They sat waiting. The servants moved discreetly, making sure that everything was in place. Then the doors closed silently behind them.
Nick looked at Amy. He had been about to say something sharp, mocking, but then he saw how young she was, not more than twenty, and how anxious. It occurred to him that it had been brave of her to bring him here, and sit him down in the face of all this silk and gold. He swallowed the abrasive words and said, ‘May I eat this now?’
The anxiety vanished and at once her face was alive with sympathy and humour. ‘Of course.’
The soup was thin and clear, yet mysteriously rich with game and brandy. Nick’s disappeared in two spoonfuls, and the crusty bread with curls of yellow butter along with it.
Amy was smiling with pleasure. ‘Would you like some more?’
‘I think I could manage some.’
She reached for the bell-pull, a thick cream silk tassel, and then changed her mind. Instead she ladled the soup herself into Nick’s bowl. When all the soup and all the bread was gone, Amy touched the bell-rope. Nick raised his glass of wine to her.
‘What shall we drink to? To the revolution?’
Amy glanced up at the gold-traced ceiling and the heavy curtains with their tassels and drapes. ‘Not the revolution. Not here and now. I don’t think it would be … fitting.’ She was smiling, but Nick saw that she meant what she said and he felt the first flicker of liking for her. Amy Lovell’s loyalty would be worth winning. ‘I think we should drink to Jake. To his recovery, and his success.’
‘That’s more or less the same as drinking to the revolution. But here’s to him.’
They drank, looking at each other.
The butler came and took their plates away, and the footman’s eyebrows went up a hairsbreadth at the sight of the empty soup tureen. After the soup came fish, as light as foam with a shrimp-pink sauce.
When they were alone again, Amy asked tentatively, as if she was expecting a rebuff, ‘What was it like, marching to London?’
Instead of dismissing the question with a shrug, as he might easily have done, Nick said, ‘It was a long way. But not as hard as I’d expected. Most days we ate better than we would have done at home, and there are worse things than just being wet and cold and tired. And then there were times when it was all worthwhile. More than worthwhile. Like when the local trades council people came out to meet us even when their executives had directed them not to. We didn’t have official backing for the march, you see. It was all supposed to be a Communist manoeuvre. Yet the people came anyway. And other times, like when we made the Spike managers give us special status.’ Seeing Amy’s puzzled face, Nick put down his silver fork and grinned in the candlelight. He was struck by the incongruity of talking about these things to this girl in her pearls and her elaborate dress. ‘The Spike. The workhouse, you see. When there was nowhere else for us to sleep we’d go there. They’d try to put us up in the Casual. The Casual ward, for vagrants. One blanket, usually lousy. Two slices of bread and one mug of tea for breakfast. And in return you surrender everything at the door. No money, tobacco, matches, anything, allowed in the Casual.’ Nick laughed at Amy’s expression. ‘You didn’t know? Why should you? It’s a fine, proud system. If a man hasn’t got anything else, why should he need dignity? But we wouldn’t accept